accusation, false witness and other terrorists of our time. she combines all of her stories on false sex crime accusations throughout the 80's and 90's to argue there is a flaw in the justice system. this is about an hour. c-span: dorothy rabinowitz where did you get the title "no

crueler timoney is? >> guest: by my very enterprising editor at simon and schuster, and i thought it served very well. "no crueler tyrannies" than under the shield of law and justice. a perfect title. c-span: why the book? you've written a lot about this in "the wall street journal." >> guest: a lot and mostly because i came to the journal on the wings of one case like this and i had an editor-in-chief at the journal, bob bartley, who instantly recognized the importance of this event taking place, this sweep of false accusations of child sex abuse that he recognized that there was a larger issue called prosecutorial run away prosecutors who, quite simply, in many cases don't care.

they don't really care if you're guilty or not guilty and you will never give up the conviction. and all of that combined with the cases of american citizens, most of them, almost all of them middle class, low and middle class people that got up and saluted the flag and were believers in our society and believed until all the and believed that if you are falsely accused of something, our system of justice is there for you and you will be recognized. someone will come forward. in every case i wrote about, the citizen said it's a mistake. someone will come forward. and they believed it to the end. c-span: before we start on any of the cases, maybe 15 seconds on each one and then we will

come back to it. >> guest: they were caught at the height in 1984 which may seem like a long time ago to people, but it really wasn't. 1984, 1983, 1982 began a great sleep title wave of false abuse that is 20 schoolteacher's accused. there was a famous martin case in california where the prosecutors all over america picked up on nursery schools. that is when they're great thrust of all these cases where nursery teachers, child-care of workers from all of them were accused of being a part of child molestation. heaven knows what ends and then there is something called the national child abuse act so the governor poured money into agencies that went out to look for child abuse. if you pour money in you are going to find child abuse. they created jobs.

anyway, and i italian-american family run by a woman that had been on welfare pulled herself up into this position brought up to children alone. very successful child abuse -- child agency. people relished getting their children in there and suddenly one day there was an anonymous phone call. it was labor day, 1984. she was advised that her son, her adult son had been accused of molesting a child. in 1984, and indeed in some places still now, you don't need any more than an accusation. if he was immediately taken away two days later to prison. they got him out on bail. no one come from the accusation or did anything. as time went on and a pattern

was established in all these cases -- and this is typical -- she was then in her late sixties to get she was that accused during her adult daughter was accused. it was alleged to be a family conspiracy to molest children. they were arrested, they were convicted in two separate trials and they were given the enormous sentences. gerald being the male, and you have to understand as the ruler in all these cases that gender matters, fewer now you are seeing it as a major perpetrator , although if you are a loanable men as kelly michaels was, the weight falls on you, anyhow, they were sent away to prison, and i began writing about them after she and her daughter both served about six years and gerald served eight years.

and a couple months after the first piece hit the wall street journal, the women were released on a plea, and gerald was cut and they're began our fight to free him. the prosecutors fought to get the women back into prison, and they almost one. but by this time, the publicity that had been generated by the writings about this, which were taken up later afterwards in the "boston globe" and everywhere was so great, so enormous, the tidal wave of investigation into what really happened. prior to the amiraults had been my very first encounter with this time matter. i was working as a television commentator. i was at wwor-tv in new jersey, doing three times a week some sort of media criticism. and i looked up at the screen, something like that, and i saw

this woman in her 20s, late 20s, rosie apple cheeks, innocent, accused of something like 200800 charges of child sex abuse. i thought well, that's very odd. but i didn't think -- what do i know? i was never interested in work in schools or teachers. it never occurred to me. but something seemed odd about this. and you know when you are a journalist if there is a story that seems very strange and paradoxical there comes a point when you still get a little clique in your head that says okay i see how this bizarre thing happened. how it's possible. i never got that click. i thought how can one woman in an absolutely open place like the child care center where the church in new jersey that she worked for, how could she have committed these enormous crimes

against 20 children dress and undress them. to dress and undress even one child every day without getting their sox lost, 20 children in a perfectly public place, torture them for two years, frightened and terrorize them and they never went home and told their parents anything. cover them with peanut butter was alleged and she liked the peanut butter off, made them eat feces, drink urine, terrorize them, this did seem strange. c-span: what was her name? >> guest: margaret kelly michaels. we did get her out and she won on the first appeal and today she lives with her four children and has just delivered a fifth child with her husband, former prosecutor one of the few people that i wrote about who has put her life together in so helpful of a way and without being haunted because once you endure

false imprisonment of this kind, and remember there is no one more despised, no one of the and the alleged child molester. i mean, the amirault women when they were thrown into prison you couldn't imagine people more used to comfort, upright status, there were churchgoers thrown into a prison on a dirty mattress while they awaited being moved to this to have people spit at them and call them child abusers and these people were isolation cells for their own protection. c-span: i went to get a little on each one of those people grant. >> guest: as they would say in one of the papers a police officer as he was who wanted all of his life to be a and police finally made it though he was short he stretched himself accused because he had a quarrel

with a fellow police officer of sodomizing a child. it was such an absurd contention that even the miami jury, and this was all in the 1980's, in the early 80's, they refused to convict him, but here is the other aspect of these things. prosecutors will not accept even money jury says know. he came back with your charges and victims and the charges but younger and younger because you can inform little children with a lot more persuasive memories of abuse that never took place of older ones. ultimately, he got six life terms, and he is now out. c-span: patrick griffin. >> guest: patrick griffin was a much loved physician in manhattan. some of this doesn't bear telling just because of its stomach turning aspects. but patrick griffin was accused

by a patient who was angry at him for not helping her with her phoneme lawsuit against some institution of sodomizing her while he was performing a colonoscopy on her. and anybody who knows anything about the colonoscopy knows the nature of what goes on, remarkably revolting things happen. and the idea that this man committed oral sodomy on her. in any event, patrick griffin was convicted by the marvil, marvelous talents of his a appellate lawyer he was able to prevail. the the second trial. anybody that ever gets to the second trial is in great danger because the statistics will tell you a jury is going to come back to some. something like 60% of all people who go back but not in this

case. it was something to grotesque. all these people and telling you about or haunted by this and then there are the people in wenatchee washington where there was a wholesale pursued by one loan detective who decided he knew what child abuse laws. this was in the 90's so it's sort of extended to begin the hero of the small town in wenatchee, washington. and most of the people he picked up for welfare clients, people on welfare who knew nothing, had poor lawyers and they were supposed to be part of a sex ring where people climate in and out of a church to get every one of the stories that i am telling you about was brought on convictions that no same injury would have credited on evidence that was simply incredible to behold. they were all the same kind of pieces of evidence. because in all of these cases, the prosecutors had an

interconnected langevin diligence, the same charges in every case. they had qualms, that people dressed in costumes, children were made to watch animal sacrifices. i ask you how many places -- so it was nonetheless the case that the prosecutors in every case said this case is different. it's not like these other cases. in every case all the evidence was the same. that's because and i have to stress this, they have expert witnesses and the expert witnesses would travel from trial to trial to serve the prosecutors and how did the jury believed that as an the amirault case mrs. amirault at the term age of 77 and a child molester that raped children, she was accused and convicted of

inserting the stick into the body orifice of a little boy tied him to retrieve staff naked and everyone in front of the house in massachusetts and the children all tested to this. the ones the or part of the case who would believe this? but if you have a prosecutor tells you hear all of these brave children that have come forward to ask that you credit their story because they have endured so much suffering and if you don't do this, you are vitre and the children. it is not easy to find a jury that is stalwart enough to say you know, this really is a pile of nonsense. c-span: john carroll. >> guest: john carroll, upstate new york, owner of a boat marina who simply had no school business or nothing, your wife mad at you, a woman who is angry at you, is separated wife, and also the sense of rumor --

the case to speak of now, john carroll, is the kind of case that is much more often now heard. you're not going to find, because of all that we now know -- your not going to find people in schools began walked out en mass the way they did in the 80's and chained together. you're going to find husbands angry of lives, why is angry at husbands come a bitter divorce cases in which the most powerful weapon is a child sex abuse. the was never true before the 1980's. now it is the weapon of choice, and anybody can be accused. and in this case, mr. carroll was convicted. the evidence was grotesque -- to detectives appeared on the stand to testify that they could tell from his body language that he was guilty. what was the body language these two detectives knew? wellcome he held his legs like this and he moved forward. and he was looking at the door.

all of this impressed the jury in upstate new york. the same prosecutor's witness that has divided the 80's to the kelly michaels case, her theory being that, as a child says no, no, no, nothing ever happened, was the absolute proof that something did happen. and the jurors thought that. she was here to say that roughly in the same way again. how is it, you could asked, that prosecutors could pick for their expert witness so discredited an expert as this particular one. eileen treacy was her name. she had been denounced regularly. people wanted to do nothing with her. because prosecutors want to win. they call one another of and say i need an expert witness. call eileen treacy. we'll get her for you. that's the way it works.

what i'm saying is an ugly truth i think most people apprehend. prosecutors have among them some -- many honest people who know the meaning of their -- the integrity and uphold their -- but others, many others simply want to win their cases and will go down to their last breath when someone has been acquitted saying he's guilty. when dr. griffin was acquitted by the second jury trial, and the judge in the case said to his attorney why did you even ask for a jury? i would have had this man acquitted in two minutes at a benching. prosecutor in new york in the manhattan district attorney's famous sex abuse unit called me the next day after i wrote the piece about him and said he's as guilty as sin. there has to be something in the capacity of -- and the mental

capacities of prosecutors who know against all of the evidence they want to hold on to their conviction. and so people are still in prison. gerald amirault is still in prison because the state of massachusetts won't let him go because the integrity of their case -- he represents the victory. so you can say what is one man's life? he's been locked up. everybody else is out. he has been locked up in the state of massachusetts because the supreme judicial court of massachusetts, one of the most vulnerable -- that a noble institutions in the united states -- it was formed immediately after the salem witch trials -- it is that old. nonetheless, the supreme judicial court of massachusetts ruled that there have been so many appeals in gerald's case that time is more important than justice. we have put an end to this process. this shocked many, many, many people in the legal establishment in massachusetts. so there are we -- so there we

are. c-span: so how do you know -- i mean, what sense do you have that -- as i was reading, i was thinking why does dorothy rabinowitz right about this? and why are there these other people wrong? >> guest: they aren't all wrong. i knew -- the first that told me what was wrong was -- the kelly michaels trial was my first encounter with this in the 80's. the atmosphere was very like the ayatollah's can't when i raised to the television news editor i said you know, we should do story on this. there's something wrong with this case. and here was a wonderful piece by a journalist in the village voice, debbie, who also raised questions you get the look on the face of the editor was such that i knew you're not even allowed to raise this. he said don't ever mention this to me again.

this is the most hated person in new jersey. everywhere in the newsroom i went i said you know, there's something wrong with this story. how dare you? it's the how dare you? i knew there was something sacrosanct about questioning these charges. this should raise questions. but how did i know? i didn't know. i thought well may be the prosecutor knows what he's doing. so i asked to meet the prosecutor. glenn goldberg and he was happy to meet with me. why? because i was no liberal person. i was a grown-up person with a fairly conservative lighting credential. and he told me how much evidence he had against her. a was nonsense. he followed me down the stairs after i raised the questions and he said by the way, now i'm going to tell you the real evidence i have against her to get what was that, sir? he said she didn't wear underpants under her jeans. imagine. i said and what did that mean?

he said don't you know, that was the kind of evidence -- c-span: how did he know? >> guest: they arrested her, and i guess they found out. but the other thing was they sealed the transcript. what are they hiding when the seeley transcript? "the new york times" went and asked in a desultory kind of way "the new york times" and a couple of other papers mind on to court to open the record. and they said no pity i found my way to the record. i got somebody to open it for me. and that's when i knew. i read the testimony. i read the entire children's testimony and the interviews kid i saw what the jurors did not see. and here's what i saw. the children are interviewed. there are five, they are for, they are frightened. they want to please the settled sitting in front of them come and they don't know what they are therefore. but the adult is suddenly showing them a big ball and the

doll house what is called sexual organs, sexually explicit or riggins to get and the interview were is very persistent and very nice and says to the child do you want to help? you're little friends helped. do you want to tell us of something bad happened? what said the children. well, you know, something happened. and the child doesn't know. c-span: are they doing this, wide awake alone, just two of them? >> guest: just the two of them. c-span: so there is a transcript being treated? >> guest: that's right given they are so certain of their virtue and rectitude of their cause that they let the tape recorders take this down. and they've learned a better leader. they stopped recording these interviews. and they would hold of us do in and say show us where kelly molested you, did something bad to you. the child has no idea what's going on, but the child takes the spoon and hits the ball here. where else? child hits the shoulder.

where else? because it's very clear to the child by now that her answers are insufficient to get she's not giving the questioner what they want. there are where else's and where else's until the child comes to the sex organ, hits the sex organ with the spoon. all the questions stop. no more where else. the questioner has got what she wanted and what he wanted. what's presented to the jury is only -- not this odyssey around the falls head but only rachel showed us where kelly molested her with a spoon. she touched the genitals. that was the kind of evidence. when you see i'm saying in cold print the details of questioning and you know. and you can't miss it. c-span: why is it admissible? why is that kind of evidence admissible? >> guest: because it was kind of a sacred truths and because this is not hearsay.

they produce, the prosecutors produce what they've dragged from children after hours of questioning and that is simply distorted. will.i.am in many cases the child is right. >> guest: the child is right -- c-span: same that's where i was touched. there are cases there are truly child molesters. >> guest: there are always child molesters but this doesn't ever come out like this. you can tell what is going on with the accusations. it's such a scandal today. i have no doubt that there are a number of priests falsely accused but i have no doubt i'm listening to the testimony of these children now grown up that these events took place and what is the difference?

these people said something be eaten little boys went home and told their mothers and they went to the priest. the other thing is there is no crazy talk about clowns. there is no talk about bluebird's being slaughtered or being made to drink urine. you didn't need to sanctify any of this. he did this. it's a down-to-earth way to say this. so i can vouch by the fact that these stories about the mcclelland listing of these children, none of that ever took place. c-span: the very first time you looked on that screen and salles kelly michaels was when? >> guest: i believe it was 1987. and it took me two years to write -- to get published. c-span: where did you publish

the first story? >> guest: first harpers magazine. lewis, the editor-in-chief, took a chance with everybody else turned down. and they turn it on for the strangest of reasons. i knew almost every editor of the time and they were filled with commiseration. they said a look when you know i have a 4-year-old child or i just can't do this. because i was a piece that didn't just raise questions about her guilt, it said it was an innocent person. you know, when you've seen an innocent person that you know because you've seen the record in prison and a life altering experience. she was sitting there in solitary for two years. c-span: did you see her? >> guest: yes. and i almost fainted. i don't faint. i went to this -- one of the most secure women's prison in new jersey and was dismal -- and this was brought in a highly educated young woman and talking to me about einstein and i was

about to pass out, looking at where she was. it took me a long line time but i did know that if i didn't do something about this life would not really be the same. c-span: were you -- did ander -- >> guest: anger was everything. anger and everything. ander and horror because the anger was so doubtless and overwhelming that these children came and knowing absolutely nothing about what they were talking about and were told. these words were put in their mouth. they were told what happened to them and they were drilled in what happened to them. and when they took the stand, they believed it. and that's exactly what happened to all these children. c-span: go back to the lew lapham thing, the editor of harper's magazine. >> guest: yes, editor -- sali went through every editor at the new yorker and this and that and finally i said you know what i've written and three times for three different people and they've all backed out. somebody said why don't you try

lew lapham? c-span: did you know him? >> guest: you know in new york when you write you sort of know everybody. i think i once had met him he got to the phone and i got wind of the story for ten minutes and he said let's do it. it amazed me. let's do it. we then sat down in his office and with a couple of his editors lie out and all of this, and he had -- i believe more response to the story than in many, many decades at harvard. c-span: and the was 86? >> guest: it was published in 93i spent two years trying to get it published. was april of 1990. c-span: and you were working there at the time? >> guest: i stopped working on television. and i was simply doing book writing, freelance stuff and i was just about to join the journal, but i wrote this before the journal and with lew lapham's publication of that, we were able to move. we got money. we got a lawyer.

c-span: we meaning? >> guest: i and -- i did. i mean i did and then i got a wonderful lawyer morton stavis to read this, who is now deceased. one of the great liberal first amendment -- notte first amendment, civil rights lawyers coming and he took some of his students at yeshiva university and they spent two years putting together her appeal and the one hand she was out. and i will never forget that today when the appellate judges, you know when you go into argument an appeal this is not like you're going to get the decision right there, but this was one of those times when the appellate court was virtually telling you that this case is a crock. but the prosecutors were there and was very dramatic. the two prosecutors that had brought the grotesque stories about how the children went home and the evidence like one of the mothers said my child doesn't eat tuna fish anymore. this is a really important piece

of evidence and what was that supposed amine? according to prosecutor the smell of tuna fish is very like the smell of vaginas. that was the level of evidence. at the appellate court, we were no longer in the state and the prosecutors -- i mean you were no longer at the low level court and the prosecutors started to say judge, your honor, children don't live. we have heard this a thousand times before. and the judges looked down and said who are you trying to bamboozle? you call this evidence? so, we knew. c-span: how many articles did lew lapham published in harper? >> guest: one. c-span: one article? >> guest: it was one that was

enough. it was enough to get everything was laid out. these are not subtle matters. i mean, children who are told, children who are disrobed, kelly sang "black magic." they were given a magic juice drinks. you could not hear more fantastic stories and yet in the courtroom when she was on trial, the children wanted to run to her to kiss her. do you want to someone who has so terrorize you? >> guest: c-span: let me ask about the journalism of this because you do tell the story in here where ed bradley was sought after in the cbs lunchroom. >> guest: yes, yes. c-span: by whom? >> guest: grand snowden as i am a police officer. you must understand -- and i assure you do -- to everybody this happens has a family, so it's not only to get used this taken down that everybody around them, all of his children. brandt snowden's grief-stricken

brothers could not believe that their brothers were going to be sent away, his brother was bring to be sent away for life terms for something they know never happened to this, he got on a plane and he came to new york, not knowing where he was going and he somehow found his way to the cbs building, carrying a sheaf of papers from the trial and all of what he thought would persuade someone. and he somehow worked his way into the cbs luncheonette and sort of grabbed ed bradley because they always looked on the media. the media actually helped to bury the accused but they were also the way out. you know, as soon as there was an accusation in the early 80's, you did not have reporters going around saying he maybe this isn't true. when you had was night after night after night on television about the poor children and the monsters. gerald amirault was considered and mrs. amirault were the monsters and the witches and life was transformed. what happened to gerald is

unique in the sense that we live, and they always believe in a society where justice triumphs. even to the end, they still believed that something is going to happen. the truth will out and they were right except in massachusetts. in massachusetts as we say, the apples fall up not down. every single mistake in massachusetts about one come every important legal still which meant in force has virtually said he's innocent, not just said leave him alone. they said look it's clear that this is garbage that they wanted to hold onto him. gerald amirault left -- was taken to prison on his youngest son had just been born yet he just got to know his daughters to get he missed their antiyour growing up but, you know, what is so moving about many of these families, kelly michaels' mother, the sacrifices and the

way life sort of the absorbent this trauma and they lived nevertheless. they had birthdays. they had -- gerald amirault's children bore their confirmation close to their father said he would see them. the girls are now 23, 22 and the sun is 18. but he missed everything. he missed every graduation and as it happened, he was one of those lawyers who lived for his children and still does to get c-span: and you're not slowed the convinced that he's totally innocent? >> guest: not only i'm convinced, everybody is convinced. let me tell you the massachusetts -- the governors parole board of massachusetts is the toughest parole board in the country. they have reason to be to get tough ex prosecutors, hard-nosed types, they had a special parole hearing for gerald, a commutation petitions.

unanimously, they declared that he should receive commutation a couple of years ago, about a year and a half, two years ago. the majority of the board then issued a separate opinion that said in essence this case is based on nonsense and there is every reason to believe that this person has been falsely sent away. this was completely unknown to the history of governors parole boards and pardons. that's how much everyone understood about this case, which has been exhaustively looked into. so, he had 1 foot in the door and was on his way out. it's unheard of most -- actually on heard of in massachusetts history that a governor would not listen to the parole board, which today issued a scathing -- c-span: but let me interrupt the because the governor in that case was jane swift? >> guest: that's right. jane swift, tough jane swift was fighting for her political life. c-span: she was acting governor? >> guest: she was acting governor of she wanted to be

governor governor pete and jane swift who already had a terrible reputation as the governor, was advised by her political advisers in it would not be good to allow gerald amirault out. c-span: had she had her twins? >> guest: she had her friends. c-span: and where were we in the year? i mean, she was in primary? >> guest: she was in a primary? i think, yes i believe it was a primary. it was just before she had to step down. we got the news a year ago that she was going to do this. she made the decision that she knew more. she had done her own investigation. the board of pardons and parole had investigated so thoroughly to make absolutely sure that they would make no mistake and that there was nothing anybody could do. she overruled because she was in the middle of any election, her own board of pardons, for which she was roundly, you know, attacked and she even -- the citizens of massachusetts even

declared come to know, their outrage. but you could do nothing about this now. she put him back and. c-span: i want to get the public's street. jane swift then was running against -- mitt romney was running against her? >> guest: no, not romney was coming -- mitt romney team leader. jane swift, i forgot whom she was running against, she was running against someone else. she was in a primary. c-span: i remember in your book you say something like she was 60 points down. >> guest: that's right. she was 60 points. c-span: even in her own party. >> guest: in her own party she was 60 points down. everybody knew she was the landaluze but she said it had nothing to do with anything. some weeks, not many, less than a month after she made this political decision she never got to run because mitt romney, she had to defer to mitt romney because her own party saw her as so weak. so, the whole gesture was for nothing. c-span: but she also had the other politician in this thing.

scott harshbarger. >> guest: scott harshbarger was the original. in the 1980's he was the original chief prosecutor. he didn't actually prosecute at the trial. he then went on to greater things. he ran on his victory in the amirault conviction in the 80's. he was advertised as the prosecutor who would put child abusers away. he went on to become attorney general of massachusetts. c-span: he was a democrat? >> guest: he was a democrat. c-span: and jane swift was republican. >> guest: republican peaden and scott harshbarger and on to become president of common cause, a good government will become and has never once yielded his belief. he used to write letters to "the wall street journal," which is not known -- the editorial page which is not known as a left of center place, accusing us of being things he wrote about this case, of trying to throw child abuse back into the darkness and of protecting child abusers.

i had to ask myself does this person actually believe you can get away with a charge that the editorial page of "the wall street journal" is out to protect child molesters? why would we be doing that? will come and you can't change the mind of a determined prosecutor, determined that he will appoint his conviction. so, there we are. what is one man's life? you're left with a question, one man. you know, i was always moved in the way i looked at these people, these families, the anonymous nature of their suffering. nobody knew the agony of these families. there are many other kinds of agony in the world but the way they made their lives, delayed a sword held together they didn't know how one man sat, who had done nothing wrong in his life, whose wife was not confined to this little bed. i went to visit him in prison. c-span: gerald amirault?

>> guest: yes. c-span: what present? >> guest: this was in one of the boston presence. i don't think it was plummet. i forgot which one. there were three. he's now in a better one. but i was allowed to visit his cell. c-span: before you do that, quickly, violet? >> guest: violet died. c-span: her relationship to gerald? >> guest: she was the adored mother and her daughter cheryl. she had two grown children and mrs. amirault, when she was released and her daughter cheryl released by a judge who granted the appeal, had to spend the last two years of her life, she spent two years and freedom. she was in her 70's by then and the prosecutors and all of their energies on this case trying to put them back into prison. c-span: where is cheryl today? >> guest: cheryl has made her life, too. sheryl is in boston. wonderfully enough, the prosecutor when she agreed that

cheryl would not go back to prison, made her sign an unofficial, not a binding statement that she wouldn't appear -- ever appear on television. prosecutors are very under of that interview is being given by people who were released. c-span: how can you do that? how can you -- >> guest: well, there was a real question. boston peters said what is she afraid of? she allowed her -- she didn't want her speaking on television. when i came to florida, the day we knew that we could take grant snowden and to freedom after the 11 years he was not going to serve his life term but he did spend 11 years in this rathole prison in florida, the prosecutor who was by then - and broken had only one pleaded the judge. your honor, we would just ask that mr. snowden not talk to the television interviews and the media, and the judge said i don't think we are here to cut off people's first amendment rights. in sherrill's case in boston was another matter.

the prosecutor has agreed to let her stay out of prison. now, you could say i wonder why she is allowed to speak to newspapers, but the power of television is so great and it's so intimate that she did not want this woman come to stand there so obviously innocent, by then everybody knew, to remind everybody of what they'd done. c-span: held with schiraldi today? >> guest: cheryl is today she's in her early 40's. c-span: how old is gerald? >> guest: gerald is about a year or two older putative he's about 44, 45. he compiled a marvelous record going to school and prison. one of the things that has made his life easier come easier is that everybody in the present system knew he was innocent. they know. this is one of the many things i've learned about in my involvement with these cases. in prison if someone on the outside, someone in the media,

if the media asks questions about your case, they begin to look at you as not the same kind of monster and child predator. they began saying well, maybe he is an innocent. in prison they don't pretend if they are a child abuser that they are innocent. as gerald and others have often said, there are guys who really molested children and they don't pretend otherwise, and that seems to be true. c-span: ulin to visit him. when was the last time you saw him? >> guest: about two years ago. i went in and i saw. there's a little bunker on the top of him and is another and another and i looked at it. i said how can he live? how can you live this way? you know, he looked me with such an odd question in his eyes pity he said you know that a lot advantages when you're a prisoner for a long time. i thought you think this is advantages. prison so reduces your sense of

expectations. when grant snowden and for the first got word that his wonderful attorney robert rosenthal had actually managed to win habeas corpus you don't get anything harder than that. and he was going to be out, what the first thing that happened when he was worried. he was worried what would happen to him. 11 years in this hermetic prison and all you want to do is run your confession can be stand and hold onto your job. he was happy all right. so, the expectations are shut down and you just do what you have to do to survive, guilty or innocent. but in prison, kelly michaels, who came with a lot of education and a lot of spirit and a lot of spunk, she was -- actually people spit in her suit and they did all kind of things you do to a child after a couple of years we thought she should be out in

the general prison population while her appeal was being worked on, and she made friends. people understood that there was something that this didn't happen. when cheryl was released, gerald amirault's sister, when the amirault women were released, cheryl have -- had to go back to prison for eminent the very day of their release. the entire women's prison population cannot to cheer her. these are the same woman that had threatened her, spat upon her years earlier when she first came into the prison because they ultimately know that something bad has gone by and they don't fool around. c-span: let me ask you about, in part of the journalism's, but before i get there about yourself. >> guest: yes. c-span: where do you come from the originally? >> guest: i come from queens,

new york and goodlatte and went to city college at a time when the city colleges in new york were sort of like harvard and what they offered, and then i went on. i thought i would teach literature. that was a bad mistake. i was not meant to be an academic, and i quickly found that out and then i began to write. c-span: what year would you say you began to write? >> guest: i know very well. i never planned to become a writer and that's always been a very helpful if you don't planet by planned to become a teacher cadet i left graduate school. i had nothing, no way of earning a living, so i thought i would go to work as a social worker in a home for the aged, and i hardly had any idea then that this would give me. this had to be in the 1936

middle 1960's, and i wrote a piece about the old people lysol at this home for the aged, and i had no intention. i just thought i'd take this down. it was so -- it just drove me. it was such an impassioned piece, and i was fortunate enough to have it published. to have the first piece you've written published in a very good boost. it was published in commentary and was immediately asked about. the than macmillan company, which we still have come offered me a book contract, and we were off and running. but i'd never intended it. and here's what i learned from that. i often thought if i ever did teach journalism, i like to wait until you have something to say. if you get mad enough, if you get paned enough, moved enough,

and you're not going to have. you say i'm going to have to tell the story. and then i will do something else to it i would not have written any of that pit i have no idea how many pieces i've written all these people when the journal. it's remarkable. they have allowed so much space on this but i couldn't have done it without being compelled by pure rage. of all of the emotions that you have, teddy, it's not that and you are thinking of the victims were gerald, that's behind you. what you are thinking about is a prosecutor. thinking about the totalitarian nature, this enterprise. the was the most continuous

beam. it's never enough. c-span: do they say here she comes? >> guest: well, the amirault prosecutor didn't see me coming because i was pretty new. they didn't know i had to do with the kelly michaels case. they didn't know it. you have to talk about science, you have to talk about the prosecutor. i call them and they were happy to come to the phone because of his experience who was the active lead prosecutor. this experience had told them that the press was there for him to carry the story out. in the midst of him telling me how successful the prosecutor had been, they had been locked away in prison by the time i got there for many years it was a dead case. they were dead and buried and massachusetts was concerned.

i knew about because i knew all the cases with families who had been slammed in. there was such a bunch of them and i said did it ever occur to you that this case could ever be overturned on appeal? he said it never happened. three months later, they walked out of present. and i remember by that time everybody knew who i was and what i had to do with these cases. the press is your generous. there were crowds of people from the national public radio and elsewhere at courthouses, a wonderful little place in boston where the judge has gone to release the women on appeal, and one young woman reporter said to me just tell me how did you know? because she already knew. i said what do i have to know?

you tell me that this woman took a four and a half a butcher's knife and this is one of the pieces of the testimony, inserted it into the illness of a four-year-old child, left no marks, didn't hurt the child but what do you have to know? all of the charges were like this. there isn't a single charge brought against them the verso fantastic. she cut off the leg of a squirrel. stories change from a minute to minute. the children were making the story is up because of the interrogators they were saying if you don't help me and tell me, we are going to be so disappointed, you are going to be trey your friend, and this is literally word for word. and the testimony, none of the jurors ever saw this testimony to date and i can tell you this. three or four years ago in the effort to overthrow the

conviction which always fails, the court granted a special investigation. a special panel to go over all of the evidence in this case, and it brought all of the reporters in and for the first time, the reporters, it is called the finding of fact. the reporters sat listening to the testimony of the children and i heard one of the reporters screen she heard one of these lower pieces. a reporter had heard what really was in these interrogations'. c-span: harbors in 1990 he went to work for "the wall street journal" editorial page. all of this has been done on the front pages and back pages in the editorial pages. >> guest: right. c-span: so what is it that you did to convince bob bartley when he was editor of "the wall street journal" that he wanted to put you on his payroll and

then let you do this? >> guest: well, nothing to do with this spigot he had been reading my other political work. i was a media critic and a tough one, and one day -- actually, when he called up and said how would you like to come and work for the journal i thought he was talking about kelly michaels that had just been published and harbors could actually come he hadn't even read that keeping it was the other stuff i wrote about and i said fine. but two minutes virtually after i got into the journal, kelly michaels was there and i wrote about that and he recognized what i'd done in that case. but it was not until i wrote about gerald, the amiraults, and i won't forget that day, it was january, 1995, the i first sat down to write about this case, and we were overwhelmed. and bald came out of his office and said to me this is fantastic. another one. and the publisher, peter kahn,

came down and said i hope you get these people out. now, mind you, nobody asked me anything. nobody said how could you write about anything so delicate? and that was actually the beginning. after those first three pieces, a week passed and the "boston globe" sent me a reporter down. the most important thing in these cases is that the local papers take up these things and when the boston globe came down to ask me what i knew and to take this on, too, we were up and running and hitting it so, after they got what i gave them, they undertook a series of their own and that's what i had the impact. c-span: do you think given what journalism is supposed to become if you were working for that front of the newspaper that they would have allowed you to have this kind of advocacy? >> guest: no, absolutely not. the front of the speaker, no pity about tremendous support from the front of the paper but it was the editorial page. they created a unique thing on the editorial page then, which was investigative reporting carried on in the editorial

columns bob bartley had himself and pieces of investigation on yellow rain. so i basically had carte blanche to go right, and these pieces were immense. the last and forever, 80 inches high 60 inches, and went for a number of years, and i did my other work there. i was media television writer, and i wrote other editorials in between. but what really happened, after i wrote the first piece about gerald, the amiraults, our readers of which there are very many got really disturbed, and when i say the phone didn't stop ringing of and all they wanted to know was what can we do? and the same was true actually of harper's magazine. people had this gut-wrenching feeling when they read this

stuff, pouring money in to a fund which we didn't run, but which i have our lawyer. when i say our lawyers, i mean the team of the appellate lawyers that i worked with on one of these who were all heroes. c-span: so, what do you say to the person listening to this and had read your article as if they can't get dorothy rabinowitz interested they're out of luck? >> guest: well, that's what they say but you know what, the press now is a very different press. they ask questions about these kind of cases now. what i think is different and what i did because i was able to do it was to do all the things like get the lawyers and the money to do it all and not just report. c-span: will gerald amirault ever get out of jail?

>> guest: yes. yes he will get out of jail. his next appeal comes up for regular parole next september, and i think he will get out. there's only one problem. there's a little lull in massachusetts and elsewhere called the sexually dangerous persons. the prosecutor can, even after he's paroled, decide she's going to keep him there any way as a sexually dangerous person. we hope it doesn't happen. we think she'd like to put it behind her finally by you never know. c-span: here's the cover of the book coming and it's written by dorothy rabinowitz. it's called "no crueler tyrannies", published by wall street books for simon and schuster. thank you very much. >> guest: thanks for having me.

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